Partnerships and business chairs
Bernard Chevassus-au-Louis, chairman of Humanité & Biodiversité
« Biodiversity: a sensorial, cultural and social experience »
Partnership with the Humanité & Biodiversité association
Unbreakable bonds between humanity and biodiversity
The main object of Humanité & Biodiversité is to strengthen everybody's perception and awareness of the synergies and unbreakable links between humanity and biodiversity. The association works for the conservation of diversity of living things and their freedom to evolve. It also seeks to encourage all business sectors to take account of biodiversity in economic and social terms.
Promoting biodiversity with economic stakeholders
That's why Humanité & Biodiversité is developing dialogue with organisations that have an effect on society, especially in the business, social enterprise and community sectors, because they have an important role in incorporating biodiversity issues into society. In this regard, it seems essential for them to work with a business like ECT and to participate in its corporate goal.
The purpose of the discussions between ECT and Humanité & Biodiversité is to create a charter. This charter will set out how, through its activities and its projects, ECT can achieve more and better for biodiversity. We want to develop general principles for our operations that take account of different types of environment and the conservation of habitats of protected species.
In Paris, in the heart of the Bois de Vincennes, the École du Breuil has for 150 years offered one of the largest urban horticultural estates entirely devoted to teaching. A 10-hectare garden, combined with a 13-hectare arboretum, forms a unique technical platform that welcomes more than 300 students every year, in both school and apprenticeship programs, from 10th grade to Master 2. ECT and Ecole Du Breuil have signed a partnership agreement for 2022.
Fertile substrate experiments
École Du Breuil aims to develop specific expertise in soil issues, which are of strategic importance in the Ile-de-France region, and to test various emerging solutions to offset the artificialization of agricultural land and the sterilization and increasing scarcity of topsoil.
Training and apprenticeships
The partnership also aims to develop and exchange knowledge on horticultural practices.
Conferences
Franck JUNG, Director of the EIVP
"This new chair again places the EIVP's teaching and research at the centre of the challenges for the greater Paris metropolitan area in terms of urban engineering. Working with ECT enables our university to participate in a very practical way in the innovative dynamic of the players in the Sustainable City."
Partnership with the EIVP; endowment of the business chair entitled "Upcycling Inert Soil"
Partnership with the EIVP; endowment of the business chair entitled "Upcycling Inert Soil"
The EIVP (the City of Paris School for Engineers / École des Ingénieurs de la Ville de Paris) is a university for urban engineering. On 23 October 2018, ECT signed a sponsorship agreement with EIVP marking an important step in their close collaboration. To last for a period of 2 years, this partnership is for the creation of a teaching and research chair, "Valorisation des Terres Inertes", dedicated to upcycling inert soil from urban construction sites.
Training and research into excavated soil
This chair is to develop a centre of excellence and train engineers and researchers at a high level. The chair, with a multidisciplinary approach, will be for training and research into the re-use of soil excavated in large urban areas.
What do ECT and the EIVP want to achieve? They want to expand research, expertise and the dissemination of knowledge and best practice both in France and internationally, especially in these two areas :
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- Environmental engineering relating to the management of excavated soil from the construction & public works sector, and the requirement for traceability
- The field of designing and carrying out land-use developments that give the benefit of value-added to the regions and to their users.
Objective no. 1 - Training
The chair will make it possible for ECT's engineers and researchers, as well as international experts, to have input into the Engineering degree course as well as into EIVP's programme of continuing professional development. The chair is organising a conference for spring 2019. It will be dedicated to the issues relating to the re-use of soil from the construction sites of cities around the world. It will be prepared by a scientific committee chaired by Antoine Grumbach and will bring together people who are well known in this field.
Objective no. 2 - Innovating
The chair raises the possibility of joint tenders for innovative national and European projects. Also, in the context of postgraduate training, the range of seminars on offer will be boosted in terms of the subjects of the chair, and research allocations and CIFREs (industrial agreements for training through research) could be offered on these topics. The chair will also expand the possibilities for "Study & Research" courses and thesis work for students in the 2nd and 3rd years of the engineering course.
9 and 10 April 2019: First conference organised by the EIVP and ECT on the theme "Earth in all its States" : Read more
For access to the page that the EIVP devotes to the chair of upcycling soil of urban construction sites, please click here
In Paris, in the heart of the Bois de Vincennes, the École du Breuil has for 150 years offered one of the largest urban horticultural estates entirely devoted to teaching. A 10-hectare garden, combined with a 13-hectare arboretum, forms a unique technical platform that welcomes more than 300 students every year, in both school and apprenticeship programs, from 10th grade to Master 2. ECT and Ecole Du Breuil have signed a partnership agreement for 2022.
Fertile substrate experiments
École Du Breuil aims to develop specific expertise in soil issues, which are of strategic importance in the Ile-de-France region, and to test various emerging solutions to offset the artificialization of agricultural land and the sterilization and increasing scarcity of topsoil.
Training and apprenticeships
The partnership also aims to develop and exchange knowledge on horticultural practices.
Conferences
LPO - League for the protection of birds
The LPO is an association renowned for its work to protect biodiversity. The aim of the program developed for the Little Owl in Ile de France is to re-establish ecological continuity between the Val d'Oise and the north of Seine-et-Marne. The aim is to preserve the bird's population nuclei in this area.
The LPO's mission with ECT is to advise us on the Villeneuve-sous-Dammartin (77) site, located in the study area for the Little Owl. ECT's action will be to encourage its settlement, by creating corridors and, more specifically, by installing nest boxes for the owl in the orchard area.
MNHN UMS PatriNat, systematic map
The theme chosen for this systematic map, the object of ECT's sponsorship, is the use of reworked soils to restore ecosystems and promote biodiversity.
The theme of reworked soils has important implications for the restoration of degraded ecosystems and the development of a "brown network" linked to the Green and Blue Network (TVB).
This systematic map will provide a synthetic state of the art in French on the issue of reworked soils, mentioning key figures and best practices relating to the subject. The map will be published on the website of a scientific journal.
The result will provide an informed overview of the studies available at international level (either published in dedicated scientific journals, or in the form of "grey" literature). It will also list scientifically-documented best practices, supplemented by descriptive quantitative analyses.
